


The world's weight on your shoulders

by astralprojects



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hints of trans dysphoria, How do you express what you feel?, Hurt No Comfort, Light Angst, Minor manifestations of gender dysphoria, Non-binary character, One Shot, Short, ventfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25496899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralprojects/pseuds/astralprojects
Summary: Another day in the world's shadow, and Rinko's disappointing again.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	The world's weight on your shoulders

Rinko Shirokane experienced the world's weight on the carpet.

The fibres grounding her were rough, flattened, and noticeably itchy. An unattractive texture to others, and with the scratching against her bare limbs, her as well. But she lay there and stared somewhere she couldn't identify.

At some point, she had been staring to her side, a dull gaze nudging at the pull out drawers under her mattress. At another point, it had been her cupboards, just shy of the mirror so she didn't have to look at herself, or someone that she supposed was her. 

Right then, she didn't know where or what she was looking at. Her eyes were open, but she couldn't tell a sallowing yellow from a tasteless white. The wires were too far apart to reach, rendering her unable to connect them and regain a sense or control of something even if she tried.

And she tried. She tried until she accepted it was hopeless, futile, and her fruitless efforts were all made in innocent vanity. Nothing physical was stopping her from moving, but there was an unidentifiable force somewhere, keeping her ramming herself into a wall until she realised that she was going nowhere quicker by the second.

The fan's wings spun idly in the background, or maybe they didn't. With the bed obstructing her, Rinko couldn't feel it, whether they were or weren't moving. It would be fitting for them to be the latter. A motionless snapshot of her time, lost, out of place, and dizzy as the world raced around her and left her behind. Swallowed up in a cloud of dust, serving to remind her of a nostalgic memory, a world where she could be adequate and equal. Where she didn't fail like this.

That world was out of her orbit entirely, progressing somewhere so far from her line of sight. Its scenes blurred together like the days, the shades, the feelings she had and wasted.

Her family talked up her potential until it was unrecognisable.

Perfect test grades, perfect reports, perfect behaviour in school, perfect everything. The pride and joy of her relatives. A child with the promise of success tight in her grasp. Entailing everything needed for a happy future, and naive enough to believe it all.

She could have been somebody. She was supposed to be.

But Rinko Shirokane, the shining star of those expecting of her, was lying on the bristled carpet.

A thousand images too distant to initialise whirled past in her mind. A piano competition, a poetry contest, the role of student council president.

And then her band's coveted title, the praises that had come and gone, a reward certificate, a fragile keyboard solo echoing across a silent and adoring crowd. Was that her? It couldn't be. That seemed so unthinkable.

Of all things, Rinko wasn't capable of it.

That was who she was, after all. She felt a knife tear straight through her chest at the slightest perception of rejection, had her hands shake at the thought of being a disappointment, and cried helplessly at words she could never call her own. A failure through and through, spiralling nowhere fast.

Rinko Shirokane, who buried herself in video games and online activity to distract herself from the inevitable. Rinko Shirokane, who acknowledged her hallucinated ability face to face and let it wander by. 

Rinko Shirokane, who was drifting in a near-tangible sea of beige synthetic threads, haphazardly fallen stale cake crumbs, and hopeful investments that were never long for her.

Rinko Shirokane, the shameless failure.

Tears stung her eyes, but she simply greeted them and resisted as they struggled down her cheeks. Her distant bedroom was familiar - too familiar. She hadn't gone far from it in a week. It all blended together, one stroke of the clock merging into the next until another day had lugged by where she hadn't done anything but disappoint. 

Unexpectedly, she could recall everything in that moment. She was staring at a stray patch of ceiling with a glare that lacked a light. It had been tinted by odd cream markings that had carved themselves in somehow, bringing identity to her bare room, scarce of adlibs if not for them.

Her fan wasn't rotating, though she couldn't recall turning it off. Incredible. Something frozen in its life, having fallen short before its task. Something she could relate to. An inanimate existence that understood.

The mirror reflected the pedestrian situation it was stuck in, revealing a pile of folded clothes she hadn't got around to putting away yet. Rinko wore them in an unplanned rotation, pulling on whichever temporary set she saw first. They didn't feel like they were truly hers, but she didn't have the urge to care. Instead, she satisfied herself with how she wasn't fussing over every tidbit of her appearance, or even her overall image. That didn't really matter, what she wore or what she looked like, in the grand scheme of things.

Rather, the grand scheme of things was something she was too unfocused to imagine. It was important, and she was trivial. That was their relationship. It dragged on as she got lost in it. It didn't care who she was or where it could find her, if at all. Time didn't slow down so she could catch up.

Likewise, time fuelled it, sighing as she lagged behind, or perhaps not noticing her at all. Either way, Rinko was abandoned. With each turn of the page, twist in the plot, or simple replay of the track, that would never change.

She was being forgotten even then, the fan having spontaneously restarted its lonely cycle again and leaving her last place like the rest. The curtains, a monotone grey colour, were tucked neatly to opposite sides, exposing her wide open to the world, if she could have been seen behind the bed.

The world observed her as she lay there, no emotion to its actions. Its suffocating intensity crushed her unmoving figure, watching curiously as she squirmed with no hope or will.

It was another unchanging day like always as Rinko Shirokane experienced the world's weight on the carpet.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh wow I can't believe I acknowledged my emotions time to shove them all under the bed again


End file.
